As mentioned in our year-end wrap-up, a great number of events that shaped technology in 2017 were natural disasters. Scientists and experts predict that we will see more of these natural events and will continue R&D efforts to prepare for them.

Smart city technology will become more important as geospatial professionals seek to find better ways to predict, analyze and prepare communities for the onslaught of weather events. Actual Smart Cities are being built in some parts of the world. And to make those smart cities and countries, in some cases, viable, we will grow greater confidence in artificial intelligence, vehicle technology, Cloud, Internet of Things (IoT), drones, high resolution satellites and small satellites, augmented, virtual and mixed realities and data and sensors.

These technologies have become or will become a part of the fabric of geospatial interaction as the demand for them increases.

For many years, sensors were a kind of distant relative of geospatial technology. Now they are front and center, a powerful driving force. They are behind data capture technology from UAVs, high resolution satellites, GPS-enabled smartphones, smartphone apps able to capture 3D scan data and much more. They are the brains behind the IoT, AI, and the driverless car vehicle technology on the horizon.

To get a sense of just how much influence sensors alone have, take a look at the following:

The Internet of Things (IoT) and Artificial Intelligence

This holiday season saw a big upset as Amazon slashed prices on its Echo Dot smart speaker and its Alexa voice assistant to $30, forcing the price of Google Digital Home Devices down, and complicating the release of Apple’s HomePod. Amazon limited the purchase of Echo Dots to three per family. Sales went through the roof, and these are backordered for an extended period of time.

What does this device do and how does it impact our lives?

Smart speakers start talking only under specific circumstances, like when they are awakened and spoken to, or when there’s a timer or reminder set up, or when someone calls the device. A Talking Digital Assistant like Echo may ultimately connect more devices and complete more tasks around government, commercial and private establishments than has been previously been possible.

And on the social spectrum, will it supplant friendships, do shopping, give us driving directions? Will we relinquish more responsibility to devices than we already have?

What are the ramifications for security as Amazon collects information from its Echo devices (and other servers will do too)?

Artificial intelligence, which this device technology is an example of, is a collection of advanced technology that allows machines to sense, comprehend, act, and learn. Echo Dots can learn how to recognize your voice, sense your voice and comprehend and act on a command. The notion is that AI can in fact “improve productivity and lower costs, unlock more creative jobs and creating new growth opportunities.” Ultimately, customers could pay for goods by simply using their voice.

Business Insider Intelligence predicts that Amazon will continue to perform strongly and lead the U.S. market in the smart speaker market, selling more than 70 million smart speakers through 2025. It is expected that more devices will also feature screens in the future.

This year, many popular software providers have discussed their role in the upcoming self-driving car technology. The foot is on the accelerator with this technology, with many technology providers developing new aspects of this future tech.

While it may not seem imminently viable to geospatial professionals, it is technology that will affect our workforce but also the way we build roads, rail and bridges, to incorporate self-driving vehicles. As it impacts those infrastructures, it will then impact the destination infrastructure that is connected by those networks. So while it might not be something that you will encounter when you go to work this coming Monday morning, research and development is under way to bring future technology to fruition.

Technology for autonomous driving such as Sanborn 3D HD Maps and the navigation technology to operate driverless cars will change the landscape of our roadways and the workforce.

The challenges faced by Sanborn HD Mapping Technology is to reduce unattainable time and costs of autonomous car testing.

Their outcomes have been as follows:

High-precision 3D base maps

Substantial reduction in production time

3D mesh used in driving simulation tool

automotive partners visualize and analyze 3D models on the Web

Just this week, Nissan announced its R&D to use brainwave sensors to detect what a driver intends to do in the next fraction of a second, or in a self-driving car, what he expects the car to do.

Open Source

Open source software is not a new trend, but it is destined to continue into 2018. Open Geospatial Consortium (OGS) standards will be valuable in the proliferation of IoT offerings, new driverless car regulations and perhaps will influence capturing real-time data from other sources.

Smart Cities and Nations

In the U.S. we have many cities using smart city technology but not to the extent it is being used in Europe and Asia. This technology is destined to explore every new technology that is released, including that designed for IoT, reality modeling and self-driving cars, and all data capture capabilities.

The adoption of technologies to realize cities takes place more quickly in Asia than anywhere else in the world.

China’s next big new city is the new Beijing capital. According to Santanu Das, senior vice president, Design and Modeling at Bentley, they’re moving the capital away from Beijing. to between Beijing and Tianjin. About 200 miles to the east, it is a USD $118 B project and they’re going to finish it in five years. There is no environmental impact report that needs to be done. They don’t have government regulations of flyover, data capture, conversions, like in the U.S. There’s probably a 2 million population between those two locations.

A small nation/state/city such as Singapore is well poised to take advantage of and demonstrate this exciting new technology. Singapore will become a blueprint for larger nations to embrace a holistic view of building, incorporating all the requirements of a nation that it was not possible to do at the birth of most countries.

Chief executive of the Singapore Land Authority (SLA), Tan Boon Kai, gave a keynote entitled “Towards a Geo-Enabled Smart Nation” at this year’s Bentley “Year in Infrastructure 2017” event in Singapore, talking about Singapore’s push towards being the “world’s first smart nation.” This involves improving the lives of citizens, creating more opportunities and building stronger communities.

Using good data, the government can carry out better measurements and improve the nation’s performance holistically. They have limited land, and it takes just an hour to get from the airport to the furthest point on the island. Their goal is to optimize land resources for the economic and social development of Singapore.

References to entire cities being built in Asia:

Set to be complete by 2020, Nanhui will be a “satellite city” (kind of like an urbanized suburb) in the Pudong area of Shanghai. It’s over a decade in the making. Construction, including residential complexes, eight university campuses, a museum, offices, plazas, and retail began in 2003.

Designed by the German architects Gerkan, Marg, and Partners, Nanhui New City plans to attract 800,000 residents and reportedly cost $4.5 billion.

The Chinese government has spent billions of dollars constructing Yujiapu Financial District, nicknamed “China’s new Manhattan” (There are even skyscrapers inspired by Rockefeller Center and Lincoln Center). Construction on the 1.5-square-mile site started in 2008, and will total an estimated $30.4 billion.

Most popular and notable design software companies offer some kind of augmented and/or virtual reality tools. Putting those two together, you have a mixed reality experience. These are in greater use than ever before, as they can also offer a fourth immersive and predictive model for more clarification.

A product we looked at in 2017 may signal a trend in VR: Alan Buckner, director of workstation VR management, talked about the HP Z VR Backpack workstation that was announced at SIGGRAPH 2017.

The HP Z VR Backpack product boasts very high frame rates provided by NVIDIA Quadro P5200 with 16 GB video memory, seventh generation Intel Core i7 vPro Processing, two totally swappable batteries that can be swapped while the VR session is running. This allows the user to keep the immersion running. Plus 32GB Z RAM to drive large datasets and applications in VR.

The Backpack itself is lightweight, engaging, easy to manage, for those who need an untethered experience for moving around in different jobsite areas freely. It also is great for IT administrators who want to bring the product into an environment where it works with other products.

SaaS Solutions

Software-as-a-service applications are here to stay, cloud-based services that by definition interact with a number of clients over the internet. They can be open or on private networks. This is a cost-effective way for organizations to procure and use their GIS tools, by only buying the tools they need when they need them. This works well for both small and large geospatial firms with requirements for GIS, analysis and visualization.

Small satellites

According to NASA, small sats is the umbrella term for describing any satellite that is the size of an economy-sized washing machine all the way down to a CubeSat, which you can hold in your hand.

CubeSats were developed by researchers at California Polytechnic State University and Stanford University who wanted a standardized format to make launching them into space easier and to be small enough for students to get involved in designing, building and launching a satellite.

Often the small sat can ride on a larger mission if it is small enough.

The small size of the satellites, be it the size of a cereal box, for example, doesn’t allow much room for the science instrument or power to run it.

NASA is working on flying a group of satellites in a formation, each of which can see a slice of Earth. The views could then be stitched together later.

While small satellites don’t offer the high resolution or longevity of bigger satellites, they can cover more ground area and fly more frequently. They can also be sent into areas that you wouldn’t want to send a larger satellite. Combined with large satellites, they can complement and offer a bigger picture.

Several other creative ideas are in the works, which suggests that we will see more about small sats of all kinds in the coming year.

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2018/01/04/giscafe-trends-and-predictions-for-2018/feed/05276GISCafe 2017 Year in Reviewhttps://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/12/19/giscafe-2017-year-in-review/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/12/19/giscafe-2017-year-in-review/#respondTue, 19 Dec 2017 19:43:52 +0000https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=52612017 tested the resilience of geospatial technologies with many natural disasters. In reviewing the year, we take a look at products, services and technologies that moved the industry forward and responded eloquently to geospatial need.

Disaster response, weather tracking, and predictive weather analysis drove a great deal of development and put to the test those technologies in place for just such eventualities.

Other areas of interest include new developments in sensors, location and Big Data, small sats, mobile mapping and 3D models for indoor mapping, autonomous driving, and building smart cities.

Under the Weather

In an interview with URISA’s GISCorps founder Shoreh Elhami and URISA executive director Wendy Nelson, they offer a broader understanding of what GISCorps is about and how it can help with natural disasters.

Is ArcGIS Online able to generate a setting for help, i.e., website, app, or whatever resource might be needed, during a natural disaster event? And how soon might that be available to the public?

ArcGIS Online (AGO) can be used to create a variety of story maps. Those story maps as well as any AGO based web apps can be embedded in any website and very quickly. A good example of that is the web app that our volunteers embedded in Fort Bend County’s website on road closures. Another example is a story map that was built by NAPSG shortly after the disaster, our volunteers also assisted with that project.

How has the GIS relief effort for Hurricane Harvey been handled by GISCorps so far and what are the plans going forward?

26 of our volunteers have been working on mapping road closures in Fort Bend County. The information originates from County’s website, emails, and also tweets. The Web app has been helpful to residents, first responders, and the county staff. The project was lead by two of our volunteers who worked with GISCorps Core Committee members on managing the project. The Center for Disease Control (CDC) also requested the assistance of a GIS programmer to pull data from the FEMA site on an ongoing basis. The GISCorps Recruitment team selected a volunteer within 30 hours and put the volunteer in contact with CDC. We also asked our volunteers to contribute to NAPSG story map. We are currently on stand-by and ready to assist with other projects at this time, be it for Harvey or Irma.

Hurricane Harvey weather map

How do the projects for Hurricane Harvey and Katrina differ or are they the same? What are the priorities?

Quite different. For Katrina, we deployed 30 volunteers onsite, the option to assist remotely didn’t even exist. Volunteers packed up their bags, laptops, and other essentials and head over to the affected areas within a couple of days. For Harvey (and many other disasters of the past few years), we haven’t had to send anyone anywhere. Volunteers work from their home or offices and have been effective in different ways. For Katrina, the priority was to help with the rescue efforts at first (locate people under stress and report to the coast guard) and then, the recovery phase began where volunteers made 100’s of maps and conducted lots of analysis). For Harvey, crowd sourcing and information from social media have become major sources of information for developing interactive maps to first responders and other affected population.]

Tom Jeffrey, CEO of CoreLogic, a leading global property information, analytics and data-enabled solutions provider, talked about their analysis for the flooding and storm surge as a result of Hurricane Harvey.
Many news reports have pointed out that there were an enormous number of people in flood zones who did not have flood insurance. CoreLogic’s analysis shows that 52 percent of residential and commercial properties in the Houston metro are at “high” or “moderate” risk of flooding, yet are not in a Special Flood Hazard Area (SFHA) as identified by the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Properties that are within SFHA zones required flood insurance if the property has a federal insured mortgage, if categorized as Extreme or Very High risk.

CoreLogic used their North Atlantic Hurricane Model to create wind and storm surge damage footprints for Hurricane Harvey using the track forecast data from the August 25, 10:00 a.m. CT advisory issued by the National Hurricane Center. The model tracks the multiple facets of hurricanes such as ocean flooding, wind and storm surge. The North Atlantic Hurricane Model analyzes the insured loss data to determine the expected loss range from the Hurricane Harvey event footprint in the model. Certified by the Florida Commission Hurricane Loss Projection Methodology (FCHLPM) since the inception of the process in 1997, the model provides a granular, up-to-date detailed risk assessment for the combined perils of hurricane winds and coastal storm surge flooding.

We can compare what Hurricane Harvey’s insured property loss estimates are with previous storms. In this model, it is projected that Harvey will result in $1-2 billion insured property damage while Celia was a stronger storm (category 4) and wreaked $3 billion worth of damage. Hurricane Ike made landfall near Houston and resulted in $11 billion worth of damage.

Hurricane Harvey was estimated to cause $1 billion and $2 billion from wind and storm surge damage. Left out of this equation are insured losses caused by additional flooding, contents and business interruption, as the flooding and rainfall is expected to last several days or weeks. 95 percent of the insurance claims are expected to be related to wind and less than 5 percent related to storm surge. At the time of the report, low exposure to Houston and other large metro areas was expected. However, while Hurricane Harvey made landfall near Corpus Christi, it went on to wreak great devastation in the city of Houston. In Houston alone, about 100,000 homes are damaged, according to Homeland Security Adviser Tom Bossert.

Of course these estimates were subject to change and interpretation as more data has been revealed.

A new kind of predictive weather analysis became available from Climacell, a company that adds their own proprietary analysis and weather data to what is readily available from the National Weather Service.

Rei Goffer, ClimaCell, CSO, talked about the company’s partnership with Autodesk BIM 360 announced at Autodesk University 2017.

ClimaCell is targeting the construction industry with their short-term weather prediction model. Why? “One-half the lifetime of a construction site is very weather sensitive, from the time they dig a hole for concrete, it’s a big factor on daily basis,” said Goffer. “We need to be able to plan accordingly and for each weather phenomenon. That’s why we’re addressing the construction industry.”

ClimaCell also addresses other industries. Goffer is one of three co-founders, with a background in aviation. All three co-founders come from military service where they were very affected by weather. “We knew there was a big gap in the provision of Weather data,” said Goffer.

“We are developing the world’s most accurate granular short-term prediction model,” Goffer said. “So that basically construction site managers can’t get this from any other weather app or specialized server.”

What differentiates ClimaCell from existing weather data providers?

Goffers reports:

Weather data – we have many more weather observations, at much higher quality than any other weather company.

Better models – we developed proprietary models for short-term weather prediction, that are faster and more accurate than anything previously available.

Computing power – we run our models on GPUs (Graphical Processing Units) rather than on CPU (standard processors), which gives us an edge in terms of competing time and resolution.”

“Our software can be used on the construction site, and you can see a map of the rain predicted by our engine for the next six hours down to the street level, with five minutes intervals instead of 1 hour intervals,” said Goffer. “It’s Very valuable in terms of real time operations that the construction manager needs.”

Integrated into the Autodesk solution is the ability to automatically have your construction site on ClimaCell software and automatically generate alerts that you define. “So you can say you care about a specific intensity of precipitation and you want to know if it will cross a threshold. Do tell me to send a text message or email to my team. You can take it to the next level and send instructions to people in different functions.”

Frank Braunschweig, CEO of ACTION Modulers, talked about the agreement of Bentley to acquire ACTION Modulers, leaders in environmental modeling. With these modulers, you can predict the impact of weather and rain on your city. Reality modeling can assist in putting that information together accurately and efficiently. Capabilities include:

Predictive analysis for urban drainage overflow

Flood early warning systems

Pollutant tracking

Key points of the company:

It was established in 2004

Affiliated with the University of Lisbon’s School of Engineering (Instituto Superior Technico)

Strong research and development team

Proven technology for EU projects

“There is interesting timing around the release of ACTION Moduler with all the flooding, hurricanes, etc.,” said Bentley’s Aidan Mercer. “This software is predicting being able to “optioneer” the potential of this happening, This means it can be predictive and it can model the potential of that happening, and integrate with our predictive analytic software. This is providing that environment by integrating within ContextCapture so you can capture site conditions and then integrate that into the environment.

It’s not very hard to predict what’s happening today. Where the digital aspect will come in is when the machine has the likelihood of failure or of weather or systems hit by unusual circumstances. It’s not necessarily being able to model the existing network, its being able to simulate that prediction beyond that point. You’re seeing this simulation going into the cloud so it continuously cross references itself to find those gaps.”

Golf Course

Sensors

On November 1, Velodyne announced that it is partnering with BoE Systems to integrate its VLP-16 Puck and VLP-16 Puck LITE LiDAR sensors into BoE Systems’ UAV fleet for geospatial data collection and analysis. This partnership delivers full 360° imaging of geography and equipment for a multitude of industries with a critical need for quick, safe, and accurate aerial inspections, including transportation, utilities, telecommunications/infrastructure, construction, aggregate, forestry, and agriculture.

In conjunction with BoE Systems’ proprietary hardware and software integrations, this provides digital maps with a level of detail that allows for the development of highly accurate flood models, drainage analysis, Building Information Modeling (BIM), contour mapping, and more.

Velodyne’s new Puck, VLP-16 sensor is the smallest, and most advanced product in Velodyne’s 3D LiDAR product range. Vastly more cost-effective than similarly priced sensors, and developed with mass production in mind, it retains the key features of Velodyne’s breakthroughs in LiDAR: Real-time, 360°, 3D distance and calibrated reflectivity measurements.

Velodyne LiDAR’s Puck LITE is a lighter weight version of the VLP-16 Puck for applications that demand a lower weight to meet their requirements. The Puck LITE has identical performance to the VLP-16, the only difference is the weight of 590 g vs. 830 g for the latter. No other changes have been made to the Puck LITE as it retains its patented 360° surround view to capture real-time 3D LiDAR data that includes distance and calibrated reflectivity measurements. Velodyne LiDAR’s Puck LITE is a lighter weight version of the VLP-16 Puck for applications that demand a lower weight to meet their requirements. The Puck LITE has identical performance to the VLP-16, the only difference is the weight of 590 g vs. 830 g for the latter. No other changes have been made to the Puck LITE as it retains its patented 360° surround view to capture real-time 3D LiDAR data that includes distance and calibrated reflectivity measurements.

SORA2003

Cepton Technologies, Inc.’s Head of Business Development Wei Wei and Vice President of Engineering and co-Founder Dr. Mark McCord talked about the Silicon Valley company’s growth and their latest announcement. In October, Cepton Technologies, a provider of 3D LiDAR sensing solutions for automotive, industrial and mapping applications, announced the launch of SORA 200, a lightweight 3D LiDAR sensor.

Wei Wei said that the reason for developing SORA 200 was that there was no 3D liDAR sensor delivering long-range, high-resolution and low cost mapping for ground robots or UAVs. The much sought after SORA 200 is able to produce highly efficient 3D map data at increased altitudes and velocities in various environments.

The FAA requires that drones fly at at least 400 feet above ground. The direction of UAVs is moving towards the medium to small surveyor market, where mining, agricultural and other industries want UAVs to gather data with a 200 meter range. With a frame rate of 200 frames the drone can fly higher and faster. Previous LiDAR offerings were only able to offer a range of 100 meters.

At 550 grams, SORA 200 is the lightest high-performance UAV LiDAR on the market, according to Wei Wei.

Location, Location…and Big Data

As a result of the huge amount of data generated via mobile devices, social media, sensors, and transactions, Gartner forecasts that 8.4 billion connected things will be in use worldwide in 2017, up 31 percent from 2016, and will reach 20.4 billion by 2020. This sets the stage for the need for powerful location tools for both business and government going forward.

The expansion highlights an update to Pitney Bowes flagship solution Spectrum, a new Big Data module which incorporates address, location and customer data information to create a single view of a customer; unique customized data sets that organizations can deploy to supplement existing investments in business intelligence (BI) infrastructure that are now embedded directly into the SDK. The Big Data module provides the ability to validate and cleanse customer and location-based data natively within Apache Hadoop and Spark, before applying analytics. Clients benefit from the combination of market-leading address validation, GeoEnrichment and analysis to get more value from structured and unstructured data. For example, organizations can use these location-based insights to gain a 360-degree view of property to streamline the mortgage process, and property and casualty underwriting; offer coverage mapping for real-time mobile networks; and understand customers, merchants and ATM locations.

“Customers’ experience with Big Data frameworks brought them to ask us for this type of solution,” said Joe Francica, managing director, Geospatial Industry Solutions, Digital Commerce Solutions at Pitney Bowes. “Every implementation is different and some clients run on 10-50 nodes, it depends on the architecture they want.”

In working with insurance companies, Pitney Bowes processed a lot of data extrapolated to Florida for Hurricane Harvey response; providing homes with records and developing risk profiles. Geocoding is used for attribution and GeoEnrichment. Big Data includes attributes such as property value, roof composition, wall composition etc. on the software side.

According to company materials, Pitney Bowes has partnered with several of the largest Big Data software providers, including Cloudera and Hortonworks, and certified its data quality and advanced geospatial capabilities on both Cloudera Enterprise and Hortonworks Data Platform to help bring their solution to market. In addition, the software provider has joined with Hortonworks Partnerworks in the Modern Data Solutions (MDS) partner program. These partnerships will enable clients that have invested in Big Data frameworks to add Pitney Bowes data quality and location capabilities to their data lakes and business processes.

Acquired on November 29 by Operation IceBridge during a flight to Victoria Land, this image shows an iceberg floating in Antarctica’s McMurdo Sound. NASA image

Small Sats

According to the NASA website, small spacecraft and satellites help NASA advance scientific and human exploration, reduce the cost of new space missions, and expand access to space. Through technological innovation, small satellites enable entirely new architectures for a wide range of activities in space with the potential for exponential jumps in transformative science.

We will be seeing more of these small spacecraft and satellites in the commercial industry as well. GIS as embedded technology has become ubiquitous for the construction industry and other industries that rely on geospatial information. In some cases, organizations do not see geospatial data as a separate entity, but as part of a whole of the datasets needed for the workflow. Bentley and Autodesk are examples of these providers.

Thornton Abbey Scan – GeoSLAM

Mobile Mapping and 3D Models for Indoor Mapping

An example of advancements in indoor mapping is the ZEB-REVO handheld mobile mapping device from GeoSLAM Ltd. That employs a highly robust 3D Simultaneous Localisation And Mapping (SLAM) algorithm, which enables the rapid creation of a 3-dimensional model of any space.

Since it does not require a GPS signal, the ZEB-REVO is at its best in complex, enclosed, multi-level environments, without compromising on the accuracy of data collection.

The real-time upgrade option for the ZEB-REVO includes a revised datalogger capable of undertaking SLAM registration in real-time. It has its own integrated Wi-Fi, with results that can be displayed live, as they are captured, on any web browser enabled device including tablets and smartphones.

Autonomous Driving

Technology for autonomous driving such as Sanborn 3D HD Maps and the navigation technology to operate driverless cars will change the landscape of our roadways and the workforce. While autonomous driving is in its infancy, the route to making that happen is becoming shorter with more supportive third parties jumping into the industry.

The problem for Sanborn HD Mapping Technology is to reduce unattainable time and costs of autonomous car testing.

Their outcomes have been as follows:

High-precision 3D base maps

Substantial reduction in production time

3D mesh used in driving simulation tool

automotive partners visualize and analyze 3D models on the Web

Used in this endeavor are Bentley ContextCapture, Descartes, Sanborn HD Mapping technology.

Smart Cities and Nations

Building entire cities is actually happening in Asia. The adoption of technologies to realize cities takes place more quickly there than anywhere else in the world. A small nation/state/city such as Singapore is well poised to take advantage of and demonstrate this exciting new technology.

Speaker chief executive of the Singapore Land Authority (SLA), Tan Boon Kai, gave a keynote entitled “Towards a Geo-Enabled Smart Nation” at this year’s “Year in Infrastructure 2017” event in Singapore. He spoke about Singapore’s push towards being the “world’s first smart nation.” This involves improving the lives of citizens, creating more opportunities and building stronger communities.

Using good data, the government can carry out better measurements and improve the nation’s performance holistically. They have limited land and unlimited space, and it takes just an hour to get from the airport to the furthest point on the island. Their goal is to optimize land resources for the economic and social development of Singapore.

Developmental

optimization of state land and properties

gatekeeper for land use in Singapore

Regulatory

registration of land and property transactions

management of national land survey system

Administration of Residential Property Act

Mapping and Geospatial:

Development of geospatial technologies in support of Smart Nation

Operation of geospatial platforms within government

Building up geospatial capabilities within the public service

The mapping and geospatial workflow includes capture, model, share and manage data.

In supporting Smart Nation, Kai said they need digital transformation, to ensure interoperability, evolving from 2D to 3D and beyond.

“Having geospatial as a key component reinforces that data is fundamental as a push for developing as a small nation,” said Kai.

SLA are constantly exploring new ways of capturing and sharing data efficiently.

What do we have to do to support digital transformation? Digital transformation enables us to deliver on service making and processes, said Kai.

“Ensure interoperability, adopt open standard formats, believe in open format and smart data so data can support a wide variety of smart apps,” said Kai. “It can be stored in our database, developed once and used by many.”

2D is inadequate to represent high density development, so they must capture and create 3D datasets with a high level of detail. This is very important to allow environmental studies.

Smart Cadastre development is also a key data set of the country and processes. “All agencies use this data set,” said Kai. “Our cadastre system will in future be called Smart Cadastre, and hope it’s extended in 3D format. We hope it will improve productivity, decision making as well as do analytics.”

SIReNT GNSS Reference Stations are developed to ensure the country continually gets the best position from the system. It supports up to centimeter level positioning, navigation, and monitoring, and is an open system supporting both public and private users. “We need to constantly consider improving the integrity of this system,” said Kai.

OneMap 2.0 allows public users to download and obtain map data of Singapore, today it was upgraded from version 1. Developed inhouse, this solution is a complete open source environment, providing high quality geospatial information for all kinds of apps.

3D National Mapping is done in partnership with the water agency, public utilities, and aviation of Singapore, and for planning risk management and policy development. It involves capturing data at street level and phase 1 airborne laser scanning and imaging and phase 2, mobile laser scanning and imaging.

Terrain models and 3D mapping shown in the 3D City model for Virtual Singapore is in a virtual environment.

Massive amounts of data are collected for over 6,000 roads in Singapore. 3D models collect roads and street furniture, and support driverless vehicles of the future. Laser scanning for heritage documentation allows the country to protect their national monuments.

“We are looking at methodologies to allow us to capture models and manage underground networks to integrate above and underground 3D Map,” said Kai.

Once details get into 3D data set, it will be great, he said. Both softwares have to be compatible and share interoperability.

SLA is trying to create efficiency without manpower, as it is one of the ways to gather efficient data.

“SiRenT is our positioning system that allows us to gather data in real time,” said Kai. “How can we gather accurate real time data? We want to consolidate all the sensor data we have.”

The role of the electric utility allows SLA to monitor energy efficiency. The problem for telcos and energy companies is the need for consolidated ways to capture. Telcos in Singapore are privatized so there is an effort to get them to share their data. “We’re hoping we’ll be able to monitor consumption levels of energy and are looking at ways to harness natural forms of energy,” Kai said.

“We need better insight into indoor infrastructure and how buildings are created as indoor data is critical for us,” said Kai. “You’ll soon be able to input BIM data, to increase the level of data you have.”

“Our challenges in Singapore in many government agencies, is how do you accurately capture the next generation of utility data underground, while ensuring today’s underground data is accurate?” Kai asked. “There’s no way of verifying underground drawings are accurate unless you dig.”

They will need to do more underground modeling, said Kai. Many countries share these challenges and if we can all find a solution in common, then technologies will be created to address the issue.

If these weren’t large enough challenges, Kai said they are working on driverless vehicle development, with SiReNT precise navigation capability for driverless cars.

ClimaCell is targeting the construction industry with their short-term weather prediction model. Why? “One-half the lifetime of a construction site is very weather sensitive, from the time they dig a hole for concrete, it’s a big factor on daily basis,” said Goffer. “We need to be able to plan accordingly and for each weather phenomenon. That’s why we’re addressing the construction industry.”

ClimaCell also addresses other industries. Goffer is one of three co-founders, with a background in aviation. All three co-founders come from military service where they were very affected by weather. “We knew there was a big gap in the provision of Weather data,” said Goffer.

“We are developing the world’s most accurate granular short-term prediction model,” Goffer said. “So that basically construction site managers can’t get this from any other weather app or specialized server.”

What differentiates ClimaCell from existing weather data providers?

Goffers reports:

Weather data – we have many more weather observations, at much higher quality than any other weather company.

Better models – we developed proprietary models for short-term weather prediction, that are faster and more accurate than anything previously available.

Computing power – we run our models on GPUs (Graphical Processing Units) rather than on CPU (standard processors), which gives us an edge in terms of competing time and resolution.”

“In almost all cases the issue is with the data, our understanding of what’s going on right now at a granular level with the weather,” said Goffer. “If you ask how can you generate better weather information? Can you use existing technologies, weather stations, satellites, radar, can you build and deploy more of these?”

The answer is yes, but they are not scalable and are expensive. Their sensors are limited. “In the U.S., we have a lot of these networks and the sensors but can be much better.

“We invented Passive Sensing so that we can make weather observations from many different sources, but they are not necessarily dedicated weather sensors on the radar,” said Goffer. “We have many different technologies to get weather data from existing infrastructure devices, such as wireless networks. We’re analyzing the way signals in wireless networks behave and their behavior is actually affected by the weather. The propagation is affected by atmospheric conditions. If we can see that we can generate with a partial tool and we can get a fine understanding of what’s going on in the atmosphere on the ground level where people live and work on a minute by minute bases down to the street level.”

Goffer said they have many technologies that they do not disclose to get proprietary datasets with which they feed their forecasting model and expand capabilities. The second part is the model so once you have better data you can improve the modeling. ClimaCell creates a proprietary short-term prediction model for which the professional term is “nowcasting” which is 0-6 hours of forecasting. That model is the first model to take advantage of the very granular data set that provides almost minute by minute forecasts instead of hourly forecasts or six hours.

With computing power, there is a huge amount of data and a new model. Traditional software architecture does not support very very granular weather model, so ClimaCell transitions their entire architecture to GPUs.

On a construction site, in 6 hours you get 1 hour intervals of weather news: chance of rain, in vague terms. With a prediction of 70% chance of rain in downtown Boston next to South Station, construction owners want to know if it’s going to rain on their site or not? “Traditional forecasting engines can’t provide that information because they don’t have fine data,” said Goffer.

“Our software can be used on the construction site, and you can see a map of the rain predicted by our engine for the next six hours down to the street level, with five minutes intervals instead of 1 hour intervals,” said Goffer. “It’s Very valuable in terms of real time operations that the construction manager needs.”

Integrated into the Autodesk solution is the ability to automatically have your construction site on ClimaCell software and automatically generate alerts that you define. “So you can say you care about a specific intensity of precipitation and you want to know if it will cross a threshold. Do tell me to send a text message or email to my team. You can take it to the next level and send instructions to people in different functions.”

This way, you can also preset alerts and make decisions that save a lot of time.

ClimaCell does work with other BIM modeling programs other than Autodesk.

How frequently can you set up alerts? “The alert can be set for whenever. Is the rain intensity crossing east?” said Goffer. “You can get that three hours in advance and the granularity. You can’t predict the weather that far ahead like three days ahead. We know enough about the weather because we have a very fine picture of a given time. We have a high certainty 2-3 hours down to the street level.”

“Our software integrates all available weather data sources, coming from government and from other sources. The entire weather market in the U.S. is from mostly government radar and weather stations. We’re the only company market globally that has significant amount of proprietary weather observation. In most places, like dense areas, we’re much better than anyone else, because we have government stuff integrated into our software and our proprietary data is twice as accurate as what you get from radar and ten times the resolution.”

Goffer will not say how they acquire their proprietary weather data, it is the company’s “secret sauce.” Now ClimaCell has weather data for the entire U.S. and by next year they plan to have it for most of the major countries in the world.

“Our mission is to encourage GIS used in higher education, in business, geography, health – throughout the university,” said Kerski. “Also, 4H, Girl and Boy Scouts, and K-12 worldwide.”

Formerly with the USGS, NOAA, and U.S. Census Bureau, Kerski said they are holding GIS Day, November 15th, in conjunction with National Geography Awareness Week, an event started by National Geographic.

Typically GIS Day is an opportunity to hold open houses at universities and companies to showcase what GIS does. As GIS is embedded into so many other technologies, sometimes students, educators and professionals are not fully aware of its profound reach and capabilities.

There are currently 800 GIS Day events listed on the online site. To find a GIS Day near you, use this site: http://www.gisday.com/

Citizen Science GIS at UCF will feature three free, public events at which Dr. Kerski will be a special guest. The events are as follows: a Geospatial Technologies Career Panel (Tuesday, November 14 from 12-1 p.m.), GIS Lab at UCF Open House, (Tuesday, November 14 from 3:30-5:00 p.m.), GIS Day Keynote Address with Dr. Kerski, (Wednesday November 15 from 4:00-5:30 p.m.) https://www.facebook.com/citizensciencegis

The Geospatial Technologies Career Panel will feature Kerski and five Central Florida GIS leaders speaking about mapping, GIS, planning and drones. The discussion will include career planning, advice and networking opportunities.

GIS Lab at UCF Open House will provide an informal networking opportunity with time to meet Dr. Kerski from Esri and to learn more about the research, education and outreach offered at UCF GIS.

GIS Day Keynote Address with Dr. Joseph Kerski – Discussion of five converging forces that are catapulting GIS on to the world stage, five trends in geospatial technology and the five key skills important to your career. Live web mapping tools will be demonstrated focusing on tools and skills such as geo-awareness, storytelling and citizen science, curiosity, 3D GIS and other aspects of GIS today.

In addition to the public events listed above nearly 500 youth and teachers will be in attendance at an event on Wednesday, November 15 entitled “Maps, Apps and Drones for Citizen Science,” hosted by Dr. Kerski. UCF Citizen Science GIS

Maps made with geospatial data in Adobe Illustrator with MAPublisher

Ted Florence, president of Avenza Systems and the International Map Industry Association (IMIA), shared some thoughts on GIS Day and the future of GIS. Florence is a well-regarded contributor to the advancement of technology in how maps are created and distributed digitally, and he currently leads Avenza Systems Inc., the developer of cartographic software such as MAPublisher for Adobe Illustrator, Geographic Imager for Adobe Photoshop, and Avenza Maps, its consumer and enterprise mobile mapping app.

Have you planned any GIS Day activities? If so what are they?

Avenza will be celebrating GIS day by promoting GIS and map use and increasing awareness of the science. We do not have any particular events of our own planned but will be promoting GIS day and GIS in general via our usual channels.

Do you see any GIS technology that might be replaced by new opportunities outside the traditional GIS space?

I see more increased use of mobile smartphones and tablets in GIS and data collection as users seek to overcome the limitations of desktop and laptop computers for the traditional work and use the very powerful mobile platforms to do work that heretofore has been primarily done on full computing platforms. That being the case, GIS technology that resides only on traditional computers stands to be usurped by newer tech that is mobile based.

What facets of GIS would you advise newcomers to explore in order to acquire the best skills for future employment in GIS?

I would advise newcomers to focus on cartography, 3D mapping and LiDAR skills as well as geospatial databases.

What are some of the biggest advancements in mapping technology within the past 5 years?

In my opinion the 3 biggest advancements in mapping technology have been, in no particular order, LiDAR, drones and mobile mapping.
The use of LiDAR for 3D data collection is a great technology that is revolutionizing the way geospatial information is collected. Drones are everywhere now and every show I attend has drones on display all over the place. Drone use for data collection and observation is in its infancy still and promises to be a fantastic thing going forward. The use of mobile devices for data collection and map use is the future of mapping and GIS as we seek to replace paper and use more and more technology in the field.

Where is GIS headed in the next 5 years? What advancements will we see and what industries will it make an impact on?

The next 5 years will show ever more advancements in LiDAR, drone use and mobile mapping as these newer technologies mature.
These will most certainly impact industries and use cases that depend on more detailed, thorough and time-sensitive data collection and moreover those that are in remote and disconnection theatres such as forestry, mining and exploration, oil and gas and military. As well, I see 3D coming to bear more as we strive to see the planet in a full dimensional space. I feel it will not be long before the traditional flat map we are all used to becomes a fully immersive 3D experience.

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/11/15/gis-day-2017-is-for-everyone/feed/05218Velodyne Partners with BoE Systems to Deliver LiDAR Sensors to UAV Fleethttps://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/11/09/velodyne-partners-with-boe-systems-to-deliver-lidar-sensors-to-uav-fleet/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/11/09/velodyne-partners-with-boe-systems-to-deliver-lidar-sensors-to-uav-fleet/#respondThu, 09 Nov 2017 15:52:26 +0000https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=5210On November 1, Velodyne announced that it is partnering with BoE Systems to integrate its VLP-16 Puck and VLP-16 Puck LITE LiDAR sensors into BoE Systems’ UAV fleet for geospatial data collection and analysis. This partnership delivers full 360° imaging of geography and equipment for a multitude of industries with a critical need for quick, safe, and accurate aerial inspections, including transportation, utilities, telecommunications/infrastructure, construction, aggregate, forestry, and agriculture.

Golf Course

In conjunction with BoE Systems’ proprietary hardware and software integrations, this provides digital maps with a level of detail that allows for the development of highly accurate flood models, drainage analysis, Building Information Modeling (BIM), contour mapping, and more.

AECCafe Voice asked a few questions of BoE Systems about the new partnership.

What are the features of the VLP-16 Puck and Puck LITE 3D LiDAR sensors?

Velodyne’s new Puck, VLP-16 sensor is the smallest, and most advanced product in Velodyne’s 3D LiDAR product range. Vastly more cost-effective than similarly priced sensors, and developed with mass production in mind, it retains the key features of Velodyne’s breakthroughs in LiDAR: Real-time, 360°, 3D distance and calibrated reflectivity measurements.

Volumetrics

Velodyne LiDAR’s Puck LITE is a lighter weight version of the VLP-16 Puck for applications that demand a lower weight to meet their requirements. The Puck LITE has identical performance to the VLP-16, the only difference is the weight of 590 g vs. 830 g for the latter. No other changes have been made to the Puck LITE as it retains its patented 360° surround view to capture real-time 3D LiDAR data that includes distance and calibrated reflectivity measurements. Velodyne LiDAR’s Puck LITE is a lighter weight version of the VLP-16 Puck for applications that demand a lower weight to meet their requirements. The Puck LITE has identical performance to the VLP-16, the only difference is the weight of 590 g vs. 830 g for the latter. No other changes have been made to the Puck LITE as it retains its patented 360° surround view to capture real-time 3D LiDAR data that includes distance and calibrated reflectivity measurements.

Does BoE Systems create its own UAVs and do they have specific features?

BoE Systems integrates cutting edge hardware and software solutions from recognized experts in their respective industries. We don’t build our own UAVs, IMUs, or LiDAR sensors so much as we integrate the different components into one cohesive system that is greater than the sum of its parts.

Do the sensors work with most drones on the market?

Velodyne has a suite of LiDAR sensors that are ideal for drone applications.

Without Velodyne’s drone-friendly LiDAR sensors, we wouldn’t be able to provide the incredible value that our clients demand. With Velodyne and BoE Systems partnering, accurate UAV mapping becomes accessible to the industries that need it.

How much will the level of detail improve as a result of the addition of VLP-16 and Puck LITE 3D LiDAR Sensors?

BoE Systems has counted on the incredible detail that Velodyne’s sensors offer since entering the UAV mapping industry.

Do you have a sample workflow of how someone would use this integrated product?

The Velodyne sensor, as part of a larger drone-based aerial LiDAR system, like the ones BoE Systems specializes in, would be deployed to any job site where industry needs fast and accurate data collection. Whether it’s a quarry or mining operation needing aggregate volumetrics, or a surveying crew needing to create a Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of a vegetated area, Velodyne sensors provide incredible value to the systems collecting and delivering that data.

Wei Wei said that the reason for developing SORA 200 was that there was no 3D liDAR sensor delivering long-range, high-resolution and low cost mapping for ground robots or UAVs. The much sought after SORA 200 is able to produce highly efficient 3D map data at increased altitudes and velocities in various environments.

The FAA requires that drones fly at at least 400 feet above ground. The direction of UAVs is moving towards the medium to small surveyor market, where mining, agricultural and other industries want UAVs to gather data with a 200 meter range. With a frame rate of 200 frames the drone can fly higher and faster. Previous LiDAR offerings were only able to offer a range of 100 meters.

At 550 grams, SORA 200 is the lightest high-performance UAV LiDAR on the market, according to Wei Wei.

Cepton partners with LiDAR USA, a leader in UAV mapping for many years, on SORA 200 to bring this new solution to the UAV industry which is shipping now. Most of the users of these LiDAR systems are educated by LiDAR USA. LiDAR USA is Ceptons first reseller and system integrator in the UAV mapping industry. LiDAR USA integrates the mapping system into UAVs for the surveying community. SORA 200 can be used with any generic UAV.

“We enable smaller drones to do the job,” said McCord. Also Cepton’s micro-motion LiDAR technology eliminates the need for expensive, troublesome spinning parts common in traditional LiDAR units. The resulting sensors are smaller, and more reliable and have great resolution and range. Being able to use off-the-shelf materials also reduces delivery wait times and overall cost. SORA 200 can provide LiDAR at less than $20,000 and provide greater distance than traditional LiDAR units.

In fulfilling the market need SORA 200 offers the following product features:

Lightweight: At 550 grams, the SORA 200 can be deployed in situations where payload weight matters. UAVs enabled with SORA 200 can fly for longer trips.

Long range: The Sora 200 has a scanning range extending up to 200 meters, which allows UAVs to fly at higher altitudes and cover more ground.

High-frame rate: UAVs equipped with the SORA 200 can operate faster while maintaining a high-density map data acquisition, as a result of their 200-hertz frame rate.

“To meet the increasing demands of UAVs, LiDAR sensors must be long-range, lightweight and high-resolution,” said McCord. “SORA 200 allows for highly efficient 3D map data production at increased altitudes and velocities in various environments. With 200-meter range and a weight of just 550 grams, SORA 200 is the lightest high-performance UAV LiDAR on the market today. We are thrilled to partner with LiDAR USA on this products to bring a new solution to the UAV mapping industry.”

Earlier this year, Cepton announced its HR80T long-range and HR80W wide-angle LiDAR products at the annual NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference (GTC). According to Company materials, Cepton’s HR series drives automation forward by bringing perception and 3D mapping to smart machines with higher resolution and longer range imaging at dramatically lower costs.

“Companies in the automotive and industrial sectors are struggling to bring 3D perception to smart machines due to the lack of currently available high-resolution, high-performance and low-cost LiDAR solutions,” said McCord. “As a result, machines currently live in the dark, with limited view of the world around them. Cepton is pushing the limits of LiDAR technology. These new products provide our customers with an immediate and practical means to enable perception in smart machines and are currently the most viable solution for mass deployment on autonomous vehicles.”

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/11/02/high-flying-sora-200-3d-lidar-sensing-solution-from-cepton-provides-high-rez-low-cost-mapping-for-uavs/feed/05188Utilities and Government Go “Digital” at Bentley Year in Infrastructure 2017https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/10/19/utilities-and-government-go-digital-at-bentley-year-in-infrastructure-2017/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/10/19/utilities-and-government-go-digital-at-bentley-year-in-infrastructure-2017/#respondThu, 19 Oct 2017 16:50:27 +0000https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=5167The Bentley Year in Infrastructure conference held in Singapore October 8-12, kicked off with a Media Day on Monday, October 8th. Among the forums that were offered was one on Utilities and Government, which showcased the company’s commitment to geospatial technologies that are inherent in all of their utility and government applications.

Aidan Mercer, Bentley’s Industry Marketing Director, Architecture, Engineering, Construction, spoke about Bentley’s approach to geospatial in this way: “What we say in GIS, is we don’t talk exclusively about geospatial technology, we talk about it being embedded in our applications,” said Mercer. “We no longer try to prove spatial awareness because it’s inherent in our software. We don’t tend to have any announcements around geospatial because it’s built into our software.”

The “Going Digital” theme of the conference runs through the different industries that Bentley represents.

Some of these areas such as water and wastewater, hydraulic modeling, calibrating networks, designing treatment plants – have been predominantly digital for quite a long time.

“The perspective of the conference is to connect those overall disciplines into a common or connected data environment,” said Mercer.”That’s providing the ability for a design application, hydraulic model application or sensor network the ability to talk to one another. It involves information that would be native to a certain application and making it available for another computer system to make intelligent decisions. That’s why you have data analytics platforms to predict and describe better outcomes. From an overall perspective that continues the theme of what we might describe as connected applications. With our partnership with Microsoft and their cloud platforms, we have been rolling out these applications progressively but now we have a more comprehensive portfolio.”

The ProjectWise ConnectEdition worksharing platform for sharing data is more on the construction side of things and contains relevant information and workflows for government and geospatial.

During the Utilities and Government Forum, several case studies submitted by Be Inspired Award Finalists were referred to that brought home the real-world application of geospatial within those industries:

Aurecon for the Zillmere Substation, Brisbane, Australia

The problem outlined for Aurecon was they had a 57-year old substation which required excessive maintenance on 33 KV circuit breakers and isolaters.

What they used were

LIDAR scans for as-built 3D models of the existing equipment

Engineers in Cape Town and Brisbane collaborated via VR

Multi-discipline design model

Virtual walkthroughs with Energex

The project utilized Bentley Substation and ProjectWise.

Sofia Municipality Street Lighting Problems

DAVID Holding helped Sofia Municipality with their street light problems which involved incomplete street lighting asset and condition information. They needed to reduce maintenance costs and time to repair.

Their outcomes involved:

Comprehensive lighting inventory

Single source of information

Maintenance costs lowered

Improved customer service through more informed decisions

The software they used was Bentley OpenUtilities.

Bentley’s AssetWise users will benefit from situational intelligence through Azure-based machine learning provided in Bentley’s partnership with Microsoft. The capabilities of this technology include:

Improve consistency and standards adherence across all participating disciplines

Quickly perform highly accurate lightning protection calculations

This application is now available.

PESTECH Automation and Integration of Substation Design Work for 230 kV Project in Cambodia

Be Inspired Winners in the category: BIM Advancements in Utilities Transmission and Distribution, this project was challenged by the fact that the site is isolated, with very challenging terrain. Manual and CAD-based design was time consuming and error prone.

The outcomes involved:

3D visualization to overcome site and transportation to site challenges.

Substantial reduction in errors

Time savings of up to 70%.

For this project, Bentley Substation, ProjectWise, Navigator and MicroStation were used.

PG&E Reality Modeling in Bentley Substation

The problem for PG&E of California was that 95% of substation designs are brownfield. They needed accurate 3D models in multiple departments, and for community and government relations.

Their outcomes included:

50% reduction in time to recreate existing substation equipment in 3D

50% reduction of travel to sites

Products they used included Bentley Substation, ContextCapture, Descartes, MicroStation, and ProjectWise.

BIM for Chinese Power Generation Projects

The problem for these projects was that they were charged to meet the massive demand for power generation with innovative, sustainable solutions.

Outcomes involved:

$1.4 million USD saved by moving from 2D to 3D BIM for Wugachong Hydropower

$7.5 million USD saved for the Qiongzhong pumped Storage Power Station

Tongzhou Water Works of Beijing South-to-North Water Diversion Project

Be Inspired Award Winner in the category: BIM Advancements in Water and Wastewater Plants, this water works had to design the plant for a heavily populated area. In addition, they had to meet government requirements to improve the building efficiency, reduce construction costs, and eliminate impact on surrounding environment.

Outcomes included:

50% design work savings.

Multi-disciplinary models estimated to reduce 40% of drawing audit work and 15% of construction costs

City planners wanted to build a 3D digital city for planning, construction and city management.

Their outcomes were as follows:

Image acquisition and production of models were completed in one month.

Imagery processed in 20 days vs. previous 10 months.

200,000 USD savings.

Used were Bentley ContextCapture, Descartes, and MicroStation.

Alberto Granados, VP Asia Pacific Microsoft, spoke of the Malaysia Mass Rapid Transit Corporation tapping into the power of Microsoft Azure. 80% of the population and primarily millennials expect the cloud to serve their needs and provide massive opportunity to disrupt. Malaysia Mass Rapid Transit were the Be Inspired Award Winners in the category, BIM Advancement in Rail and Transit.

“We are investing massively in Azure, and invest in 38 regions and four more will be announced,” said Granados. “We are bringing on 120,000 new Azure customers per month, 90% of Fortune 500 customers are already using Azure. We think infrastructure is unrepresented in this investment.”

Malaysia wants to improve productivity of workforce, and BIM or other tools are an imperative. Malaysia Mass Rapid Transit has the typical challenges of workforce, deadline, needing to synchronize different teams to reduce risk. It is the first metro able to demonstrate how the cloud can really provide assets without acquiring them and use them at any moment, in any size needed.

Agreements

Frank Braunschweig, CEO of ACTION Modulers, talked about the agreement of Bentley to acquire ACTION Modulers, leaders in environmental modeling. With these modulers, you can predict the impact of weather and rain on your city. Reality modeling can assist in putting that information together accurately and efficiently. Capabilities include:

Predictive analysis for urban drainage overflow

Flood early warning systems

Pollutant tracking

Key points of the company:

It was established in 2004

Affiliated with the University of Lisbon’s School of Engineering (Instituto Superior Technico)

Strong research and development team

Proven technology for EU projects

“There is interesting timing around the release of ACTION Moduler with all the flooding, hurricanes, etc.,” said Mercer. “This software is predicting being able to “optioneer” the potential of this happening, This means it can be predictive and it can model the potential of that happening, and integrate with our predictive analytic software. This is providing that environment by integrating within ContextCapture so you can capture site conditions and then integrate that into the environment.

It’s not very hard to predict what’s happening today. Where the digital aspect will come in is when the machine has the likelihood of failure or of weather or systems hit by unusual circumstances. It’s not necessarily being able to model the existing network, its being able to simulate that prediction beyond that point. You’re seeing this simulation going into the cloud so it continuously cross references itself to find those gaps.”

Sanborn 3D HD Maps for Autonomous Driving

There is an eagerness to embrace autonomous driving, but the bugs still haven’t been completely worked out. The problem for Sanborn is to reduce unattainable time and costs of autonomous car testing.

Their outcomes have been as follows:

High-precision 3D base maps

Substantial reduction in production time

3D mesh used in driving simulation tool

automotive partners visualize and analyze 3D models on the Web

Used in this endeavor are Bentley ContextCapture, Descartes, Sanborn HD Mapping technology.

Siemens’ Global Head of Information Technology, Helmuth Ludwig, spoke of PLM and highlighted joint development projects with Bentley from the past to their becoming an alliance partner.

“We haven’t spent a lot on digital assets,” said Ludwig. “We need a digital twin, to be able to simulate all processes on the production side. How do you take information from users and integrate them in all the steps? What happens when there’s an asset failure? How do you trace it so you can avoid it in future by having a digital twin of the product?”

Siemens has deep knowledge in several domains, in the areas of energy generation, process industries, etc. They can bring this together with Bentley’s most innovative tools to market. They are very optimistic this will bring significant value to customers around the world.

Rail electrification of mobility can’t happen fast enough. In the OpenRail environment, how can we do the best job for overhead catenary lines – a kit of parts and more? Siemens has developed for their own use good software for overhead catenary lines, that works well with Siemens other offerings. How can Open Rail electrical and the Siemens overhead line electrification best understand the control environment of the functional and the physical? “OpenRail designers will all have the benefit of, and will work very well with Siemens hardware, but will not be limited to that,” said Ludwig. “There will be no separate licensure for the Siemens rail and electrification; it will be inside OpenRail. This won’t be done for the first version of CONNECTEdition OpenRail. but for the next one, with absolute openness of Bentley Systems.”

TopCon Positioning Systems entered into a collaboration agreement with Bentley for the Constructioneering Academy initiative, for construction industry professionals to learn best practices in constructioneering, a process of managing and integrating survey, engineering and construction data to improve project delivery.

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/10/19/utilities-and-government-go-digital-at-bentley-year-in-infrastructure-2017/feed/05167Singapore: Becoming a Geo-enabled Smart Nationhttps://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/10/11/singapore-becoming-a-geo-enabled-smart-nation/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/10/11/singapore-becoming-a-geo-enabled-smart-nation/#respondWed, 11 Oct 2017 22:00:06 +0000https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=5149Getting to stay at a hotel that was crafted using the software of the host company is a really exciting experience. The Bentley 2017 Year in Infrastructure thought leadership event is held at the iconic Marina Bay Sands Hotel, in Singapore, a marvel of architecture made possible in large part by Bentley software.

Whenever a host city is chosen for a Bentley event, it is chosen based upon that region’s commitment to infrastructure. For many years I’ve attended the Year in Infrastructure events and this one is no different in honoring the geographic region that presents a great deal of industry and innovation in infrastructure. The event showcases finalists and winners in the annual Bentley Be Inspired Awards, that demonstrate excellence in all aspects of infrastructure and land planning – from roads and bridges, utilities, rail, reality modeling and much more.

There are other Be Inspired Award finalist buildings dotted around the bay that also reflect the creative use of Bentley software, and help define the Singapore skyline.

Why are so many of these ambitious projects clustered in one city/state/country? In opening comments yesterday, Chris Barron of Bentley remarked, “The center of gravity for infrastructure is in Asia. One-half of our finalists this year are from Asia.”

While Singapore is a thriving city metropolis, it is also a small nation. It may be one of the first countries to take a leap into being a “smart nation,” far beyond the ambitions of the “smart city.”

There is a stark difference between the Singapore we see today and eight years ago when the Marina Bay Sands Hotel was built. The center of the 720-square-meter island was essentially seawater, and needed to be built up with many tons of soil shipped in to support the ambitious structures that would eventually make up the profile and economy of this city/state/country.

This is where geospatial comes in, and it is indelibly woven into the fabric of how the island came to support such structures and new economic growth. In Bentley’s world view, geospatial is a part of the whole, and it is a part of all the utilities, road, rail and construction offerings as it must be part of the projects themselves.
“Going Digital” is the theme of the conference and is really the way that these advancements have been achieved and will continue to be achieved going forward. The 2010 Winner in Innovation in Structural was the Marina Bay Sands Hotel project, working with the Singapore Land Authority (SLA), the foremost authority on all the building and infrastructure on the island.

Singapore Changi Airport will open Terminal 4 the end of this month. ProjectWise construction management is already in use for Terminal 5. The new terminal will be one of the largest deep water ports in the world. With this growth, one can see how we can advance our economy at the same time as the environment.

Singapore has a mobile penetration rate of 150% and is planning next year to have seamless connectivity.

SLA embraces the whole process of project delivery in construction and has a 3D National Mapping initiative.

A 3D cadastre is coming live this year, as they want and need a continuous digital context. SLA are using aerial photography and reality modeling to process surveying immediately and that is where Bentley’s reality modeling product ContextCapture makes a welcome appearance. ContextCapture is a technology that makes reality capture and processing available to small and large companies alike and can be used in a broad range of disciplines.

Over 75% of the sales and use of ContextCapture comes from Asia. ContextCapture processing from aerial and other photography can take place on apps on the computer but as a cloud service.

ContextCapture on all sorts of devices such as laser scanners, photogrammetry, even iPhones allows all reality modeling processes to come together to produce the best scan.

Deep learning starts with ContextCapture software and learns to apply classification to rest of the reality mesh.

Towards a Geo-Enabled Smart Nation

Speaker chief executive of the Singapore Land Authority (SLA), Tan Boon Kai, gave a keynote entitled “Towards a Geo-Enabled Smart Nation.” He spoke about Singapore’s push towards being the “world’s first smart nation.” This involves improving the lives of citizens, creating more opportunities and building stronger communities.

Using good data, the government can carry out better measurements and improve the nation’s performance holistically. They have limited land and unlimited space, and it takes just an hour to get from the airport to the furthest point on the island. Their goal is to optimize land resources for the economic and social development of Singapore.

Developmental

optimization of state land and properties

gatekeeper for land use in Singapore

Regulatory

registration of land and property transactions

management of national land survey system

Administration of Residential Property Act

Mapping and Geospatial:

Development of geospatial technologies in support of Smart Nation

Operation of geospatial platforms within government

Building up geospatial capabilities within the public service

The mapping and geospatial workflow includes capture, model, share and manage data.

In supporting Smart Nation, Kai said they need digital transformation, to ensure interoperability, evolving from 2D to 3D and beyond.

“Having geospatial as a key component reinforces that data is fundamental as a push for developing as a small nation,” said Kai.

SLA are constantly exploring new ways of capturing and sharing data efficiently.

What do we have to do to support digital transformation? Digital transformation enables us to deliver on service making and processes, said Kai.

“Ensure interoperability, adopt open standard formats, believe in open format and smart data so data can support a wide variety of smart apps,” said Kai. “It can be stored in our database, developed once and used by many.”

2D is inadequate to represent high density development, so they must capture and create 3D datasets with a high level of detail. This is very important to allow environmental studies.

Smart Cadastre development is also a key data set of the country and processes. “All agencies use this data set,” said Kai. “Our cadastre system will in future be called Smart Cadastre, and hope it’s extended in 3D format. We hope it will improve productivity, decision making as well as do analytics.”

SIReNT GNSS Reference Stations are developed to ensure the country continually gets the best position from the system. It supports up to centimeter level positioning, navigation, and monitoring, and is an open system supporting both public and private users. “We need to constantly consider improving the integrity of this system,” said Kai.

OneMap 2.0 allows public users to download and obtain map data of Singapore, today it was upgraded from version 1. Developed inhouse, this solution is a complete open source environment, providing high quality geospatial information for all kinds of apps.

3D National Mapping is done in partnership with the water agency, public utilities, and aviation of Singapore, and for planning risk management and policy development. It involves capturing data at street level and phase 1 airborne laser scanning and imaging and phase 2, mobile laser scanning and imaging.

Terrain models and 3D mapping shown in the 3D City model for Virtual Singapore is in a virtual environment.

Massive amounts of data are collected for over 6,000 roads in Singapore. 3D models collect roads and street furniture, and support driverless vehicles of the future. Laser scanning for heritage documentation allows the country to protect their national monuments.

“We are looking at methodologies to allow us to capture models and manage underground networks to integrate above and underground 3D Map,” said Kai.

Once details get into 3D data set, it will be great, he said. Both softwares have to be compatible and share interoperability.

SLA is trying to create efficiency without manpower, as it is one of the ways to gather efficient data.

“SiRenT is our positioning system that allows us to gather data in real time,” said Kai. “How can we gather accurate real time data? We want to consolidate all the sensor data we have.”

The role of the electric utility allows SLA to monitor energy efficiency. The problem for telcos and energy companies is the need for consolidated ways to capture. Telcos in Singapore are privatized so there is an effort to get them to share their data. “We’re hoping we’ll be able to monitor consumption levels of energy and are looking at ways to harness natural forms of energy,” Kai said.

“We need better insight into indoor infrastructure and how buildings are created as indoor data is critical for us,” said Kai. “You’ll soon be able to input BIM data, to increase the level of data you have.”

“Our challenges in Singapore in many government agencies, is how do you accurately capture the next generation of utility data underground, while ensuring today’s underground data is accurate?” Kai asked. “There’s no way of verifying underground drawings are accurate unless you dig.”

They will need to do more underground modeling, said Kai. Many countries share these challenges and if we can all find a solution in common, then technologies will be created to address the issue.

If these weren’t large enough challenges, Kai said they are working on driverless vehicle development, with SiReNT precise navigation capability for driverless cars.

Airfare, lodging and some meals were provided for courtesy of Bentley Systems.

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/10/11/singapore-becoming-a-geo-enabled-smart-nation/feed/05149Newscycle Through the Eyes of Mapshttps://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/10/04/newscycle-through-the-eyes-of-maps/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/10/04/newscycle-through-the-eyes-of-maps/#respondWed, 04 Oct 2017 16:13:33 +0000https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=5129This week the news hit close to home: my son was working in the Manderley Bay Hotel when the shooter opened fire on Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas outside. He was safe thank God, but terribly shaken by the event as visitors poured into the hotel with panicked stories and later, the hotel was in lockdown for several hours. The level of fear and panic generated by this event was hard to contain as most people didn’t know what was happening and heard only shots coming from up high.

Rather than rehashing the news here, which everyone has read already via TV or popups on their phones, I’m going to blog through maps that show factual information on this and other recent disasters that have hit close to home, both manmade and natural. Maps put events in perspective, take one incident out of isolation and place it in context.

From The Guardian: The United States owns way, way more guns per capita than the rest of the world. And the best research on gun violence suggests that’s probably contributing to our homicide problem — as exemplified by Sunday night’s horrific shooting.

Here’s a map of firearm ownership around the world, using 2012 data compiled by The Guardian. The United States has nearly twice as many guns per 100 people as the next closest country, Yemen — 88.8 guns per 100 as opposed to 54.8 in Yemen:

We have also the aftermath of the devastation from three hurricanes making landfall in the U.S., Mexico and the Caribbean, including Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Barbuda and others, plus an earthquake in Mexico. Fortunately maps are abundant in the GIS world for tracking and analysis of the events, plus disaster recovery efforts.

In many parts of the world people do not have physical addresses, nor defined property boundaries. The importance of identifying location by addressing/location with just three words is brought to light in this video by what3words:

This Esri Interactive Map presents the enriched Shakemap of the M 7.1 Earthquake near Puebla, Mexico to show the potential impact to population and households in the area.

Clicking on the shaded areas allows you to view the impact for that intensity:

While there are still many places that are not on the radar of technology after catastrophic events such as hurricanes, cyclones and earthquakes, map technology may be used to locate victims and learn where to provide desperately needed services. From company materials: Esri is supporting organizations that are responding to hurricane/cyclone disasters with software, data, imagery, project services, and technical support. If you are in need of software or support, complete the Request Assistance form on the webpage above. All requests should be justified in the message section of the form and are subject to approval.

Web mapping applications related to Hurricane Maria provided from the Esri Disaster Response Program and agencies involved in response to and monitoring of the hurricane. There is also an identical page for Hurricane Irma.

CrowdRescueHQ is an organization powered by volunteers, who gather data from social media to support rescue efforts and victims of natural disasters. This CrowdSourceHQ Observations dashboard is updated every half-minute and displays latest observations reported in Puerto Rico related to Hurricane Maria.

Woolpert, working under two separate contracts that had very technically different requirements, collected and posted high-resolution, before-and-after imagery of areas in Florida affected by Hurricane Irma to assist with flooding and damage assessment.

From company materials: Miami-Dade County contracted with Woolpert for post-storm imagery as Hurricane Irma approached, while Woolpert’s work with the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) is part of an existing five-year, statewide contract for emergency mapping services.

“Miami-Dade wanted imagery from after the event, documenting damage assessment, while FDOT wanted to see how high the water got at the peak of the flooding to gain current flood conditions,” Woolpert project manager Mike Zoltek said. “For FDOT, we captured 1,000 square miles of imagery along the St. Johns River in a single day as the water was cresting. The imagery was collected across four counties—St. Johns, Duval, Putnam and Clay—from Palatka to Jacksonville.”

The FDOT project is complete, while the Miami-Dade project continued as weather allowed throughout the week.

The collections have included 6-inch and 1-foot ground sampling distance (GSD) orthoimagery. The smaller the GSD, the higher the image resolution. As part of this process, Woolpert captured aerial imagery, processed the data, paired it with comparable imagery collected prior to the hurricane, delivered it to clients and posted it on a before-and-after online slider for use by anyone affected by the disaster.

The resulting online maps, aggregated with data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Google, enable viewers to look up an address, navigate to an area of concern, and zoom in and out.

Woolpert, whose planes had just returned from mapping the devastation in Houston after Hurricane Harvey when contacted by Miami-Dade, credited the county for preparing for recovery efforts before the storm hit.

Two Koreas Story Map

Two Koreas

Tensions between the U.S. have escalated rapidly, with a lot of chest thumping and threats of nuclear war. The conflict is not new, and has roots reaching all the way back to World War II. It is a conflict over control of the Korean Peninsula, pitting the North against the South.

While the Korean War of the early 1950s never formally ended, its aftermath has created starkly divergent worlds for those living on either side of the north-south divide. This Esri Story Map takes a look at life in the two Koreas; how such a night-and-day difference came to be; and offers some analysis of where the crisis could go from here.

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/10/04/newscycle-through-the-eyes-of-maps/feed/05129Special Coverage: The Global Reach of Online GIS Educationhttps://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/09/14/the-global-reach-of-online-gis-education/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/09/14/the-global-reach-of-online-gis-education/#respondThu, 14 Sep 2017 18:19:13 +0000https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=5095For several years, colleges, universities and some geospatial vendors have been offering online classes in various capacities. As companies offer fewer training courses within their facilities, and professionals have less time to travel to classes, we have seen the rise of these courses offered by universities and even software companies. What do these classes contribute to the whole educational fabric of GIS?

For students, online GIS courses offer flexibility in terms of schedule, but with the same academic rigor as a traditional on campus course, according to Sarita Field, University of Denver. Whether you’re traveling for work or on vacation with your family, you’ll have access to your online GIS course 24/7.

Some educational institutions offer “Massive Open Online Courses” (MOOCs) that allow students to take the course at their convenience, within a prescribed amount of time. While some of these courses provide limited access to professors and instructors, they serve a valuable purpose in education for those who are working professionals, or want to increase their skills in a particular area without having to sign up for a course within a specific timeframe. Also, they can be particularly useful to those working in the field or in a location that doesn’t have a university or institution that can offer the needed courses. These courses also allow thousands of students to take the course simultaneously.

Respondents to our online survey replied as follows:

What do you believe students get out of an online GIS course?

According to Adena Schutzberg, MOOC program manager, the best online GIS courses teach the same content one would expect in a face to face course, only in a different form. “One skill online students perhaps practice more than their residential counterparts relates to problem solving,” says Schutzberg. “When there’s not another student sitting in the lab doing the same exercise or an instructor or teaching assistant walking the aisles to provide assistance, online learners must take action. Online learners navigate not only course related assistance such as dedicated discussion forums for help, but also resources available on the Web and on social networks like LinkedIn or Slack.”

Upon completing UNA’s Online GIS Analyst Certificate Program, students will have learned the skills needed to be a GIS Technician/Analyst. They will learn to create maps, perform data edits, complete spatial analysis, convert CAD data and even automate processes using ModelBuilder and Python Script using ArcGIS, notes Meghan Fike, CPP, program coordinator, University of Northern Alabama

At Penn State, students can work at an individual basis, and have a wide range of motivations for taking classes with Penn State. A lot of folks are looking for a chance to pivot into a new part of the geospatial industry. For some, their programs provide the opportunity to get into the industry in the first place. And another sector of their student audience is taking an active step to diversify their skills after working in the industry for quite a while.

The University of Denver’s University College offers the region’s first complete graduate certificate program in Geographic Information Systems—available entirely online. Designed and delivered for busy adults, the GIS certificate helps professionals add to their skillset with technology skills that help solve real-world problems related to GIS.

According to Tim Nyerges, PhD, director at the University of Washington, student learning objectives and outcomes are identified for each course within the Master of GIS: Sustainability Management Program. The objectives range from basic skills in GIS workflow development for data management, data analysis and visualization displays to more advanced skills in Python programming for sustainability management.

Learning outcomes as stated on the MGIS Program website (http://www.gisonline.uw.edu/) are as follows:

Frame a sustainable system problem. Formulate a problem statement that incorporates social, economic and environmental considerations.

Plan the approach. Approach the problem using a geodesign workflow, a decision support method for modeling and evaluating the sustainability impact of different scenarios.

Gather and manage the data. Design the database. Gather data from a variety of sources, at a variety of scales and in a variety of vector and raster formats. Store and integrate data, making it available for analysis.

Analyze the data to reach a solution. Use GIS to analyze complex system interrelationships and model and iterate on possible interventions.

Report on proposed solution. Present recommendations using 2-D, 3-D and 4-D (spatial-temporal) sustainable system maps that highlight the character of system interrelationships.

What are your most popular course(s)?

“Our introduction to GIS course, called Making Maps That Matter With GIS is our #1 offering, as it’s the common gateway to most of our certificate and Master’s degree options,” says Anthony Robinson of Penn State. “That course has recently been 100% redesigned and will launch this August in its new format. I think it’s more interesting to look at popular electives, and in that case our Python programming course, GEOG 485: GIS Programming and Customization is the clear current winner in terms of raw popularity.”

At the University of Denver, based on student demand, more technical courses are offered (Python Programming), along with special topics like UAV for GIS. “The University of Denver offered the nation’s first graduate-level course in Unmanned Aerial Vehicles as they related to Geographic Information Systems (GIS),” Field says. “An emerging technology, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles are used in GIS for mapping, data collection, and high quality imagery. Cheaper, easier, and more accessible GIS tools are becoming available and GIS professionals need to be fluent in these new technologies.”

All four, soon to be five, of Esri’s online courses (MOOCs) draw many thousands of students for each offering. The most popular by the numbers is Do-It-Yourself Geo Apps, which explores the many ways to build geo-enabled applications without programming, says Adena Schutzberg.

The most popular courses are GIS Programming in Python, GIS Data Analysis, GIS Workshop, GIS Data Management at the University of Washington. These range from basic skill development courses to community project development course resulting in ‘capstone’ experience for students.

The University of West Florida offers the majority of its courses only once a year. Courses are designed to be taken in a specific order with most students completing their GIS Certificate in 1 calendar year (following the original design of the online program). Many students are working professionals who are either new or returning to college-level course work. For those who need or prefer to take fewer classes each semester, the university offer an extended course plan that takes approximately two years to complete.

UNA offers several courses as part of a unified bundled. There is not one single course which is more popular than another.

Penn State offers Maps and the Geospatial Revolution on Coursera as well as FutureLearn. “We also offer Geospatial Intelligence and the Geospatial Revolution on Coursera,” says Robinson.

Why would a student choose to take a MOOC as opposed to a traditional online course?

“Many students find the price of MOOCs appealing,” says Schutzberg. “Esri’s MOOCs are 100% free. Other organizations that offer MOOCs, or their platforms providers, require modest fees. MOOCs tend to be shorter and more focused than traditional semester long courses. Esri’s MOOCs are four or six weeks long, in contrast to 10-week or longer for traditional courses. Finally, MOOCs have a “fun” quality to them. While students are quite ambitious and focused on the course content, most have chosen to be involved and enjoy learning. MOOCs are a very special kind of learning community.”

“A MOOC is a great way to dive into a new topic without making a big investment in tuition or time. I notice that a lot of our MOOC students are people coming to the geospatial sciences from other fields, and taking a MOOC provides a chance to explore something new with minimal risk,” Robinson concludes.

What are pros and cons of online courses?

“I think the benefits of learning at a distance are pretty significant – you can earn a top-tier credential in a format that is compatible with working full time and having a family,” says Robinson. “Many online programs, like ours at Penn State, are also geared toward providing courses that closely reflect professional needs. Most university online programs also cost less than their resident program counterparts.”

“UNA’s instructor-led online courses provide flexibility offered by online classes combined with the benefit of student and instructor interaction,” says Fike. “The classes meet online with a live instructor who conducts lectures and gives live demonstrations of the skills and software being used in each course. Students can ask the instructor questions during the course sessions as if they were in a traditional classroom.”

The main advantage of online courses relates to geography. Online courses can be taken by just about anyone, just about anywhere. “I recall helping a student in an Esri MOOC who worked for the US AID food program, based in South Sudan!” says Schutzberg. “A second advantage relates to time. While some online courses are synchronous (students need to be available at a specific time for live lectures or discussions), others including ours, are not. That means students can arrange study time around their busy lives.

The main disadvantage of online courses is essentially the freedom the advantages above confer. Students need to be motivated and committed, without requirements to be at a certain place at a certain time. A second disadvantage is that students may need to work harder to have valuable interactions with instructors and fellow students. That said, I think online courses are a great environment for growth in both motivational and communication skills, so perhaps these challenges are hidden opportunities.”

What are some new online courses spurred by student demand that you are now offering?

Learning ArcGIS Pro is one such course offered by UNA. Students must complete hands on exercises utilizing the skills discussed during the lectures as well as a final project the requires them to put all skills taught in the class to use in order to complete the project.

Penn State recently launched a Graduate Certificate in Remote Sensing and Earth Observation, which reflects a growing interest across the GIS profession in working with imagery data. In that program they begin with the essentials of remote sensing and image analysis, but also include courses on Lidar, UAVs, and Hyperspectral remote sensing.

“I noted our upcoming Cartography. course which begins in November,” says Schutzberg. “The sessions on cartography at the recent Esri User Conference by Ken Field, the course’s lead instructor, and his colleagues were packed! We are excited to bring their expertise to anyone who wants to understand how cartographers think and learn to make better maps.

What technical requirements are included in the course?

For UNA’s course, students are required to have basic computer skills. They must also have access to ArcGIS Desktop, ArcGIS Pro and ArcGIS Online licenses.

Several of Esri’s courses are built on ArcGIS Online and require access to a device with a modern browser. Two courses use ArcGIS Pro, which has more demanding hardware requirements. Esri provides the needed licenses and software to students for the duration of each course at no cost.

Students should have a decent laptop/desktop computer and a broadband connection to the internet for Penn State online courses. They provide software licenses in the courses that require those. 99% of the time the school can do this without passing on any extra cost to students.

Students must have GIS preparation before being admitted to the University of Washington Master of GIS – Sustainability Management program. When admitted to the program, students must have an updated computer sufficient to load and work with ArcGIS Desktop. The program introduces students to enterprise GIS through use of ArcGIS server data management. Remote desktop processing is used, followed by data and map services linking to ArcGIS Online.

What types of homework or self-study assignments are included in the course?

“We teach about 30 different courses in a given year, and each of them is designed as a partnership between a learning designer and an expert faculty member,” says Penn State’s Robinson. “Since we offer classes that cover a wide range from beginner to expert-level content, the assignment types and course engagement methods vary. In general, our students can expect to work through hands-on lab exercises, collaborative projects, discussion activities, quizzes, and written reports.”

At University of Washington, GIS lab assignments involve both desktop and server-based technologies, e.g. ArcGIS Desktop, QGIS, AGOL, ArcGIS Server, PostgresQL, Natural Capital Project InVEST, R, and Python. “Both step-by-step instructions and open-ended approaches are used depending on the topic and course for assignments,” says Nyerges. “Step-by-step are used early in the program, and logic workflow is used in the latter portions. Customized methods and instructions are developed by students within the GIS Workshop depending on the community partner needs.”

Esri’s courses include video “lectures,” that introduce the course content. Some are actual lectures, but others are interviews or group discussions. There are quizzes to confirm understanding of key points and hands-on exercises using the latest software. Students also contribute to polls and discussions each week, according to Schutzberg.

Summary

The offerings of these and many other universities and organizations – some at no or little cost to students — broaden the educational possibilities for GIS and geospatial to such a degree that no one anywhere should have to go without that education if they want it and have the necessary resources. The fact that much software is offered as part of many courses makes it possible for anyone with an internet connection and modest computer set up to become an educated part of the professional GIS workforce.

Congratulations to Greg Rouse, GIS Coordinator, Ross County, Chillicothe, Ohio for winning the GISCafe Sweepstakes for an Amazon Echo at our booth at the Interdrone Conference last week.

Here is a word from Greg about his GIS career: “I graduated from Hocking College in Nelsonville, Ohio with a degree in Geographics, focusing heavily on “hands on” use of GIS/GPS. I have worked in the GIS industry for 20 years, and have worked as GIS Coordinator for Ross County, Ohio for the past 18. My office is based out of the Ross County Soil and Water Conservation District office, which has exposed me to various potential GIS/UAV agricultural applications. Prior to my current occupation, I was a GIS Analyst for a forest products company in Chillicothe, Ohio. Last fall I obtained my Part 107 remote pilot certificate, allowing me to fly any necessary county projects, although the current focus is on precision agriculture.”